So I'm a newbie and I was finally able to successfully crank out a small San Mai billet of 1084 core and 15N20 by hand. I was excited to see what I could do with it after looking at work by guys like Josh Fisher. I profiled the knife, put bevels on it, then threw it in ferric for the test etch which revealed a pretty neat pattern.
I decided I'd like it to be fairly nice looking, being that it is my first San Mai blade, so I took it up to 3k grit with hand sanding. I then followed etching processes that I had researched, with very bad results in the ferric. The acid left the s